Channel Hopper
by Nyxicillin
Summary: After a question from a curious fan, Rei sets the record straight. The (im)possible story of how Rei Kon and Boris Kuznetsov became friends. [yaoi-ish hints, slightly crackfic]


**Disclaimer:** Beyblade is copyright Takao Aoki. I own nothing and am simply using his characters for fun.

**Warnings:** Smallest mention of potential yaoi. Is crack-ish a warning?

**Note:** A little bit crack-y, very fun to write and likely OOC. The (im)possible story of how Rei and Boris became friends, told from the outskirts of Rei's mind.

* * *

An over-enthusiastic fan had once sent Rei a letter asking how he had managed to get so close to Boris Kuznetsov, even though the man had once nearly managed to kill him. He was genuinely curious, which was surprising actually, since most people found it hard to believe that Rei could even bring himself to _look_ at Boris without feeling anger or fear or something in between.

The fan had even gone through the trouble of including a photo for him, or at least, a printout from the internet. Rei liked the photo, if only for selfish reasons, as he didn't usually photograph so well – like a lot of things, Boris hated the photo full stop and that was it – it was a rather cutesy looking image of Boris and himself sat in a secluded booth in a cosy bar, that had apparently spread like wildfire in the beyblade world courtesy of someone's popular online blog.

Nothing particularly dubious had been going on between them at all despite what the so-called 'celebrity journalist' was suggesting, though Rei would half-shamefully admit that the thought had crossed his mind more than once – only _half-_shamefully, the other half didn't care who knew – they had just been reminiscing over drinks and sharing dreamy tales of their childhoods. Well, Rei had been talking a mile a dozen and Boris had barely said a word, not that Rei was surprised, but the man seemed more than content to listen to Rei ramble on.

It was a nice photo that reminded Rei of a nice memory. But whilst it was nice of the fan to send it through to him, it was also incredibly _annoying_ because Mao usually helped herself to his fan-mail whenever he was away, which lead to him waking up to a rather furious text that soured his mood from the very first second of his day.

To say that his teammates in China still held a grudge against Boris was an understatement. In fact, to say that they still absolutely _loathed_ him was an understatement. So for such a photo to arrive on the village doorstep when Rei wasn't around to prevent it from falling into misunderstanding hands was, well, Rei never _did_ write back to that fan.

Standing alone in the kitchen, Rei let his mind wonder. It seemed as though a lot of people had assumed a lot of things about their friend- relation- _whatever_-ship – Boris' words, not his – and nearly everyone, _literally_ everyone, had got it completely wrong.

It all started a little over nine months since the Bladebreaker's first World Championship as a team. They were due to enter for the next tournament starting in three months' time, but utterly fed up as he was with dealing with his old team's dripping disappointment after he hesitantly – _stupidly_ – climbed out of the proverbial closet, Kai had agreed to him coming over to Moscow a month earlier than planned.

Kai had already worked it out, though Rei was still none-the-wiser as to what exactly had given it away, and he'd been so immensely supportive from the outset that Rei had broken down and cried on his shoulder for a good hour.

They'd been skating on a frozen pond in Kai's back garden – could you call land measured in acres a _garden_? – apparently the pond was so thickly frozen over that it was completely safe, although Rei didn't trust Kai's judgement quite enough to let go of his friend's arms. When Rei had caught a green-eyed stare over Kai's shoulder, he'd immediately lost his balance and had not so gracefully slammed face-first onto the ice. Not his _best_ moment.

The green-eyed stare had belonged to Boris, and if Kai's sudden angry burst of Russian was anything to go by, he wasn't overly welcome. At the time, Rei's spoken Russian was at the same level as his written, that is, he couldn't really understand a word, but he'd listened in on Kai's phone calls – the ones he'd answered sat at the dinner table, for example, Rei didn't eavesdrop outside his bedroom door or anything – often enough to pick up a few words.

He heard a few 'da' for yes, plenty of 'nyet' for no, and 'blyad' multiple times for, well, Kai had taken to using the word among others instead of swearing whenever he was coerced into staying at Takao's dojo, if only to stop their friend's energetic grandpa from scolding him. Rei knew it was a swear, just wasn't sure _which_ it best translated to. He also heard Yuri's name, the red-haired devil-captain of the Neoborg team, or at least, he'd heard Kai refer to him as 'Yura', giving Rei the impression it was a nickname.

Boris seemed fantastically unperturbed by Kai's blatant fury, as if he was used to angering people. Rei guessed he might well be. From what he could see, Rei assumed that Boris had come to stay with Kai, the big gym bag slung over his shoulder gave away that much, but he wasn't entirely sure what Boris was trying to prove when he emptied his pockets and held up his keyring.

Kai had filled him in once Boris had retreated to one of Kai's spare rooms and it turned out, fortunately or unfortunately, that Boris had apparently been kicked out of his house in Saint Petersburg – for what, Kai wasn't even sure himself – and only wanted to stay for a few days until things calmed down. Rei discovered with a niggling hint of fear that 'kicked out' in Neoborg terms actually meant 'I've just broken your door key in half so you can't get back in'. Just like the rest of the world, Rei had assumed that the Russian team were only terrifying when they were under Biovolt's watchful gaze. Judging by the stories he'd heard, the world couldn't have been more wrong.

Boris had remained shut away for the first two days, creeping down only for meals and barely even sparing Rei half a glance, let alone actual words, not that it bothered him. He was so used to Boris technically not being there that when Kai left for a two-day business trip, Rei had completely forgotten that Kai wasn't leaving him alone.

Two 'lost' souls, both shunned from their homes – though for _very_ different reasons – and both ending up alone together at the Hiwatari manor. Rei would have said it was fate, if he believed in such a thing, and Boris wouldn't even have given the notion the time of day.

And so their 'budding' whatever-ship was born.

* * *

Rei had washed nearly every item in Kai's too-big kitchen twice, his arms ached, he was tired and ridiculously bored, yet ever since he'd remembered that Boris Kuznetsov could be freely roaming the house, Rei couldn't quite bring himself to leave the relative safety of the kitchen. He'd scolded himself out loud, had half a glass of wine, had another half a glass of wine, and told himself to stop being so pathetic.

He had made the decision to move to the lounge in the hopes of finding something entertaining and had completely not expected to see Boris already in the room. He was thankful the man didn't bother to turn his head, certain that Boris would have laughed at his ridiculously over-dramatic double-take in the doorway.

As it turned out, Rei would probably have had more fun just staying in the kitchen with the wine. Sitting on the sofa with Boris – both pressed against opposite armrests with as much space between them as possible – felt incredibly awkward, and part of Rei was desperate for something to happen just to break the silence between them.

Watching Boris constantly flick through the satellite channels was seriously beginning to grate on Rei's patience, barely having enough time to read the name of the programme the man had flicked to, let alone watch any of it, before the channel changed again. Even if Boris was bored, and there was no doubt he was, surely he could have found something better to do? Something less… _Annoying_?

Eventually, after the umpteenth time watching food morph into a cartoon then into a scantily clad singer before zipping back to being food but in a soap not a cookery program, Rei snapped. "Can't you just pick something and stick with it?"

Boris turned to stare across the sofa at him, eyes narrowing suspiciously with his lips pursed in a thin line. Rei couldn't help but feel he was being scrutinised, wanting to shirk away from the calculating gaze. A smirk suddenly curled at the corner of Boris mouth and he jammed his fingers on the remote without losing eye contact.

Rei groaned and dropped his head back against the sofa cushions as the ten-minute freeview flashed on the screen. He'd thought Takao was bad – Boris took the idea of immaturity to a whole new level. Funny, yes, but at the same time definitely irritating.

He was still being watched closely from the other side of his make-shift safety barrier – the cushion Rei had accidentally deliberately knocked down in between them – and he got himself caught under Boris' unblinking stare yet again. His arm was still raised, remote pointed at the TV and fingers poised over the buttons, but it was as if he was _waiting_ for Rei to react.

The smirk had grown on his lips to a full-on lecherous grin, and there was something daring and mischievous about his whole demeanour. Rei suddenly understood – Boris was _testing_ him. Two could play that game.

Feigning a bored sigh, Rei sagged against the sofa and crossed his arms. "Doesn't really do anything for me, I'm afraid. Wrong team."

He wasn't sure what made him say the words he did, they certainly were _not_ the words he was planning to use, but he guessed they would have the same effect. If anything, he was thoroughly surprised he had managed to keep cool and casual as he spoke, as if admitting you were gay to someone who by all accounts was your enemy was something people did every day.

He could probably pass it off as the wine talking, actually.

Boris blinked once, twice, looked confused, then did nothing for a very long time, and Rei was so stunned by his lack of reaction that he almost wanted to repeat himself because obviously the man must have misheard him. Where was the taunting? The name calling? The _humiliation_? Surely Boris had _something_ cruel and heartless to throw his way, or was the idea of Rei fancying other men that ridiculously absurd that it had left Boris in a permanent state of shock?

Green eyes flicked to Rei's chest and back to his face, before Boris turned to scowl at the TV set. _There_! Clearly he was annoyed because his plan to embarrass Rei had backfired. One point to Rei.

Except that technically the point wasn't his because _technically_ Boris hadn't finished making his move.

"Yeah, same here." Fingers keyed in a random sequence and the TV switched to a documentary.

Rei watched mutely for a good minute as an eagle flew circles around its prey before swooping down to snatch a mouse from a field. And if _that_ wasn't an accurate enough representation of what had just happened, Rei would eat his own hair.

Wait… _What_?

Four thoughts exploded in Rei's mind in quick succession and he did his stupid double-take thing again that Takao loved to laugh at. The first thought being that Boris was so completely and utterly _not_ _bothered_ by the notion that Rei liked men that it was both frustrating and comforting, and the latter emotion left Rei feeling gloriously insane. The second was something along the lines of realising that those three words were probably the nicest thing Boris had ever said to him – odd, considering they weren't even a compliment – and what did that say about Boris?

The third thought that had somehow overridden the fourth even though it had actually occurred after, was that he would probably throw up if he ate his own hair.

The fourth and final, the one that sent sparks of white light dancing in his eyes and tingling through his nerves at the sheer _impossibility_ of it – not that Rei was a hypocrite, but come on, it was _Boris Kuznetsov_ for God's sake – was the fact that Boris had almost very much indirectly admitted he was into guys.

And the idea had all but blown Rei's head off.

"Fancy a beer?" Boris asked him, raising an eyebrow at the empty void that had overtaken Rei's expression. Not one to take being ignored lightly, Boris promptly threw the cushion barrier at Rei's head, chuckling at his indignant cry of protest.

Rei was still stuck on the prospect of Boris possibly being gay and didn't have the mental capacity to process the fact that he had just _laughed_ as well. "Sorry, fancy a what?"

"_Beer_." Boris repeated, stretching the syllable out as patronisingly as possible, and even going as far as to sound the letters out for him like he was a kid. But he could stoop even _lower_ than that, apparently, putting on his haughtiest voice. "It's a fermented alcoholic drink made brewed from malt and-"

"I know what a beer is, you idiot." The cushion hit Boris square in the face and he tucked it behind his back for safe-keeping as he laughed again, only this time Rei bothered to notice. "Are you _drunk_?" It was the only possible explanation for the strange blips in Boris' usually stoic and often sadistic behaviour, Rei surmised.

Boris' face just screwed up in confusion. "No. I make an angry drunk, believe me. You'd know if I was."

"So… You're being friendly with me _why_?" Rei had tried, but couldn't come up with a reasonable answer.

The single silvery-grey eyebrow was back, and Rei couldn't help but stare at it expectantly as if it could explain the cause of all this _weirdness_. Boris clicked his tongue on the back of his top teeth. "You'd rather sit in silence and watch me channel hop again?"

No. No he really would absolutely rather not, thank you very much. He shook his head, didn't trust himself with actual words as it meant there was a chance the jumbled vocabulary in his mind might spew out and embarrass him.

He felt a little better when Boris returned with two ice-cold bottles and flipped the caps with a bottle opener on his keyring. Handy. Rei gulped half his beer in one go, far too quickly, and almost choked on his own stupidity. Boris said nothing, didn't even notice – unexpected as he seemed to be so _quick-fire_ when it came to pulling people up on their mistakes – he was completely engrossed in the monkeys on the TV that were picking insects from each other's fur and popping them into their mouths.

"Why do they do that?" Boris asked the room in general, not necessarily directing his question at Rei, and he easily spotted the confusion bunching the man's eyebrows together in a frown.

"Grooming. It's a bonding thing." Rei explained blandly.

"Yeah, but that would be like me and you walking down the street and, I don't know…" His eyes rolled to the ceiling as he thought, hands caught mid-gesture. Boris talked with his hands, Rei noticed, dangerous when he had a nearly full beer gripped loosely in his fingers. At least it was Kai's sofa he would ruin. An idea came to life and excitement overruled confusion's protests, Boris dragging him back to the original question. "Me picking something off your face in public and eating it. That's not grooming – in fact it's probably harassment."

Rei wasn't sure if it was the way Boris spoke so bluntly, the fact that he struggled to force English past his accent without sounding like a Bond villain, or simply the choice of example itself, but he couldn't stop the guffaw of laughter that bubbled from his throat.

It took a second – a long second – okay, maybe a few minutes for Rei to get himself back under control again, wiping tears from his eyes as his laughter slowly dissolved to a wry giggle. Boris didn't seem to think it was rude in the slightest, didn't even seem to care that Rei was practically laughing _at_ him, and a genuine smile spread on his lips. Well, though Rei _called_ it a smile, it was more a devilish grin than anything.

"That's probably why humans _don't_ do it, Boris." He managed, squeezing out words whilst he still struggled to regain a normal breathing pattern.

Boris shrugged half-heartedly and casually smeared the beer he'd sloshed on the leather sofa around with his sleeve. "Guess so." His attention was back on the documentary – penguins, no nature programme was complete without them – and Rei couldn't help but notice just how unusually relaxed he looked.

He tried not to let it bother him, not that it was technically _bothersome_, but Rei found he kept glancing across at Boris just to take in the sight and he didn't particularly want to risk getting caught, just as he didn't want to risk thinking about the reason why he actually wanted to keep staring. Look at the _penguins_, Rei.

Silence hung between them, not literally, though the absurd mental image made Rei snicker, and the thud of Boris resting his feet on Kai's highly-polished dark wood coffee table, no doubt leaving scuffs from his boots, echoed from the walls.

Cautiously, tentatively and apprehensively – Rei wasn't entirely sure _why_ he was doing something that seemed so incredibly foreboding in the first place – he decided to test the proverbial water and slid just a fraction of an inch away from the armrest and in Boris' direction.

Nothing, Boris didn't even blink. Rei tried again, the tiniest distance closer. _Nothing_. His mind, in it's infinite wisdom, decided that it liked the idea of his new game.

He took a risk and leapt a mile – figuratively, though it might well have been the truth considering who exactly was sat with him on the sofa – and Boris shot him a sideways glance, inquisitive and curious. Rei settled in the very middle of the two main cushions and pretended for the sake of his life that he had always been sat there.

People sat in the crack between the cushions, didn't they? Rei had seen it – sure, it had been three squashed on a two-seater – but surely Boris wouldn't think it was _that _weird…

"Do I even want to ask?" Or maybe he would. This time Rei was rewarded with a matching pair of eyebrows, hitched high on Boris' forehead in mock concern. Or condescension, difficult to tell.

Rei considered his answer and chewed the inside of his cheek as he stared at Boris' knees. "No. Probably not." He couldn't think of a reason to explain his actions anyway, so the less Boris asked the better.

Somehow '_I just wanted to see how close I could get before you noticed_' didn't seem as funny now as it had when Rei first thought of it.

Boris shook his head, laughed his intriguing laugh and caught Rei's attention again with his Bond-villain accent. "Guess what, kitten? Programme's over." The remote was back in his hand and, after Rei had got over the jaunty pet-name that oddly enough, he didn't actually mind, it only took a split second for him to work out what was about to happen.

An irritated groan tore from Rei's lips and he dramatically flung himself to the side – his side, not over Boris' lap because that could cause all sorts of problems – and Boris just treated Rei to a cheeky smirk and began the five minutes of button-clicking torture.

Granted, Rei did actually find it amusing, and Boris had seen right through his theatrical frustration, but there was no way Rei was going to give Boris the pleasure of actually making him laugh.

When he rested his legs across Boris' own, Rei told himself it was an act of protest. The way the man's pale hand settled on his knee – and _stayed_ there – made it pretty damn clear that Boris didn't believe it.

* * *

And that was it, really, in a nutshell.

No melodrama, no overemotional gut-spilling, none of the sappy love at first sight romantic _whatever_ his hopeful fan was probably wishing to hear. Rei had just accidentally told a secret and Boris had not-so-accidentally revealed the same, and Rei had acted like a complete idiot whilst Boris had shown that he really did understand the meaning of the word 'friendly'. He just interpreted it completely differently to everyone else around him.

Rei never had forgiven Boris for what happened in their match. Not that he hadn't _actually_ forgiven him; he'd just never once verbalised the fact. He'd never felt like he needed to do so, Boris never mentioned it, if anything it seemed as though the man wouldn't really appreciate the gesture, so they had both let it be and put it behind them.

Sighing contentedly as he dried and stacked the rest of Kai's dining set, Rei stole a glance at where Boris now sat at the breakfast table, half-dressed in an over-sized jumper and his boxers and thoroughly ruining his reputation by actually wearing the fluffy pink slippers Rei had bought him as a joke.

Boris was engrossed in the small kitchen TV – Rei couldn't help but chuckle when he realised what was showing, Boris was just _that_ macho that he found penguins incredibly endearing – his arm was poised with a spoonful of porridge and his mouth was hanging open, but he looked as if he had completely forgotten how to put the two together.

Rei was certain it was currently his go in their never-ending game of one-upmanship. The game hadn't ended with Boris' admission, in fact, Rei had got him back the very next day by deliberately _not_ mentioning that he was spooning a copious amount of salt into his coffee – Boris didn't stay with Kai often enough to know which jar was which – and the sour look on the man's face when he'd realised had been utterly _priceless_.

He'd been knocked back down yet again only minutes after Boris had arrived a few days ago by a sly, unexpected pinch on the butt that had made him jump and shriek like a girl, much to Boris' delight and Kai's growing confusion.

The sound of Kai walking down the stairs gave Rei a sudden bright idea, and he gratefully took the opportunity Boris' momentary distraction presented to him with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, deliberately dropping the tea-towel he was holding over the remote to hide the fact that he was stealing it from right under Boris' nose.

Rei nodded a quick, temporary goodbye, struggling to hide the triumph from his face – not that Boris noticed, he'd only just remembered how to put his spoon in his mouth – and made to leave the room. When Kai glanced at him from across the hall, Rei smiled and casually keyed in a specific channel on the remote behind his back.

He hid to the side of the door, heard Boris suddenly choke on his breakfast, spoon clattering on the slate tiled floor, and collapsed to the ground in a fit of laughter as Kai shouted obscenities at Boris in a pitch that sounded so much like a little girl's tantrum. Rei stole a peek around the door, Kai was glowing red like a neon tomato as Boris – so hilariously flustered that Rei had to shove his fist in his mouth so he didn't give himself away – flung himself around the kitchen in his boxers and fluffy slippers searching frantically for the remote.

Panic had apparently overridden the knowledge that he could just turn the TV off manually, but Rei was having too much fun just _watching _to bother reminding him about it.

Boris had brought it on himself, really. If he hadn't tested Rei's resolve the first time they had met at Kai's manor, Rei wouldn't have ever known the channel number for the ten-minute freeview.

* * *

And there you have it :) Sequel coming soon!


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